Black Enrollment Dips At Several Top Colleges After Affirmative Action Ban

Some of the nation's top universities are seeing a dip in Black enrollment following the Supreme Court's decision to strike down affirmative action.

According to NBC News , Amherst College, St. Louis' Washington University, Tufts University, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology are among the schools where Black student enrollment decreased for the 2024 academic year.

Mount Holyoke President Danielle Holley said schools are now having to rely on outreach programs, personal statements, and other application materials to try to meet their diversity goals since the court banned considering race in admissions.

“The feeling was pretty catastrophic,” Holley said, noting the application process has “fundamentally changed." “That demographic information that used to be readily available for a student’s file is now masked.”

MIT announced last month that the percentage of Black students in its incoming class of 2028 dropped to 5 percent from 15 percent for the 2027 class.

Massachusetts' Amherst College saw its Black student enrollment drop from 11 percent for the class of 2027 to 3 percent for the 2028 class. Black first-year students dropped by 4 percent at Washington University and 2.6 percent at Tufts University.

Dean of Admissions at Tufts JT Duck called the drop in Black enrollment "disappointing."

“We now have our first entering class selected consistent with the Supreme Court’s guidance. Looking at the first-year undergraduate class, the percentage of U.S. students of color has dropped from roughly 50% last year to 44% this year. While still higher than our figure of 38% in 2019, it represents a disappointing drop,” Duck said in a statement.

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